Scrip systems have become a popular part of retail point of sale and internet commerce marketing. Scrip is a system whereby an individual person, known herein as a Scrip Supporter, can make donations to a pre-designated non-profit entity (Scrip Beneficiary) based on that person's usage patterns within the designated scrip system or program. Currently, over $2 billion is raised annually by non-profit organizations annually via such scrip programs.
There are several embodiments of scrip systems or programs. Scrip is defined as any unit of data, such as currency, products or services, which is honored by a Scrip Merchant such that a Scrip Supporter's purchase, expenditure or usage of these units results in the Scrip Supporter's donation of goods, services or currency to a pre-designated non-profit entity (Scrip Beneficiary). Such scrip may be actual tender in the form of gift certificates, stored-value cards or paper coupons having a pre-determined dollar value. As such, each unit of scrip has a tender or real face value when used with the participating scrip program merchant. Scrip can also include minutes of telephone calling time, miles towards earning a free airplane flight, points towards a gallon of gas, and the like.
In one example, these scrip may be purchased directly from the merchant by the non-profit entity at a discount on their face-value. In this case, the discount to the Scrip Beneficiary may be a percentage based on volume, such that when pre-purchasing a $100 volume of scrip, the Scrip Beneficiary may pay only $95 for the scrip total actual tender or face value of $100. The Scrip Beneficiary re-sells these scrip to its Scrip Supporters for the full price, or the full face-value, of the scrip. The Scrip Beneficiary thereby keeps the dollar differential as a means for raising funds for its programs. The Scrip Supporters then bring the scrip directly to the participating merchant to make purchases for goods or services.
Another example involves a Scrip Supporter registering any or all of their existing financial accounts, such as debit, credit or stored value accounts, for use in a donation program to benefit what is often a tax-deductible, non-profit or charitable Scrip Beneficiary that has pre-registered with the system. Examples of such non-profit entities are public schools, churches, civic organizations, and the like. Participating merchants will enable Scrip Supporters to automatically make donations to enrolled non-profit organizations, based on service usage, expenditures or purchases by Scrip Supporters. The Scrip Supporters can do this using their registered debit and credit accounts by automatically tendering a pre-designated percentage or fixed dollar surcharge per transaction directly to the Scrip Beneficiary via draft or electronic funds transfer (EFT). The Scrip Supporter can then track these electronic donations for tax-deduction purposes.
Another example involves a Scrip Supporter's use of certain services or purchase of certain products, resulting in a participating merchant itself donating goods, services, or currency directly to a participating Scrip Beneficiary.
Therefore, scrip programs enable a participating merchant to benefit from new sales to Scrip Supporters, while a Scrip Beneficiary can benefit by having raised funds through several programs. In addition, the Scrip Supporter may benefit: a) by having obtained pre-paid scrip towards the purchase of desired goods or services at no additional premium than the Scrip Supporter would have otherwise paid when making those purchasing via traditional means at the participating merchant, or; b) by having a tax-deductible percentage or automatic surcharge on their purchases through participating merchants, donated to their selected Scrip Beneficiary based on their use of registered financial accounts.
However, current scrip programs rely on portable tokens such as financial account cards or paper scrip coupons, and this is disadvantageous. Namely, it is costly to produce and distribute such tokens to Scrip Supporters. Furthermore, as cards and paper scrips are lost, damaged, or stolen, merchants and non-profit entities often absorb the cost of replacing them to the consumer. For example, if a stored value card or a paper coupon containing pre-paid scrip is stolen or lost, a fraudulent party can present such a portable scrip token in order to obtain the cost-savings or other benefits to which they are not rightfully entitled. Therefore, another problem with such tokens is that there is a tenuous link between the token and the actual identity of the authorized Scrip Supporter. As a result, the merchant or the Scrip Beneficiary may have to bear the cost of inadvertently providing these incentives to a consumer who does not have the requisite pre-payments or purchasing patterns to benefit from them. Hence, the merchant or the non-profit may literally be rewarding the wrong party and paying twice for this mistake. This is because the original consumer will likely demand from the merchant or the non-profit their rightful scrip even without having the token to authenticate their account. The merchant will thereby have to pay for the scrip for that genuine consumer as well. Therefore, there are few, if any, mechanisms in this system for establishing the correct identity of a Scrip Supporter and validating their authority to obtain or use scrip.
The use of various biometrics, such as fingerprints, hand prints, voice prints, retinal images, handwriting samples and the like have been suggested for authenticating the identification of individuals. A biometric is any distinct human characteristic which can uniquely identify an individual. However, because the biometrics are generally stored in electronic (and thus reproducible) form on a token and because the comparison and verification process is not isolated from the hardware and software directly used by the Scrip Supporter attempting access, the problem of having to carry cards is not alleviated. Further, such systems do not adequately isolate the identity verification process from tampering by someone attempting to gain unauthorized access. Examples of this approach to system security are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,821,118 to Lafreniere; U.S. Pat. No. 4,993,068 to Piosenka et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,995,086 to Lilley et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,054,089 to Uchida et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,095,194 to Barbanell; U.S. Pat. No. 5,109,427 to Yang; U.S. Pat. No. 5,109,428 to Igaki et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,144,680 to Kobayashi et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,146,102 to Higuchi et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,180,901 to Hiramatsu; U.S. Pat. No. 5,210,588 to Lee; U.S. Pat. No. 5,210,797 to Usui et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,222,152 to Fishbine et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,230,025 to Fishbine et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,241,606 to Horie; U.S. Pat. No. 5,265,162 to Bush et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,321,242 to Heath, Jr.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,325,442 to Knapp; U.S. Pat. No. 5,351,303 to Willmore, all of which are incorporated herein by reference.
An example of a token-based security system which relies on a biometric of a person can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,280,527 to Gullman et al. In Gullman's system, the person must carry and present a credit card sized token (referred to as a biometrics security apparatus) containing a microchip in which is recorded characteristics of the authorized person's voice. In order to initiate the access procedure, the person must insert the token into a terminal such as a public kiosk, and then speak into the terminal to provide a biometrics input for comparison with an authenticated input stored in the microchip of the presented token. The process of identity verification is generally not isolated from potential tampering by one attempting unauthorized access. If a match is found, the remote terminal may then signal the host computer that access should be permitted, or may prompt the person for an additional code, such as a PIN (also stored on the token), before sending the necessary verification signal to the host computer.
Although Gullman's reliance of comparison of stored and input biometrics potentially reduces the risk of unauthorized access as compared to numeric codes, like personal identification numbers, Gullman's use of the token as the repository for the authenticating data combined with Gullman's failure to isolate the identity verification process from the possibility of tampering greatly diminishes any improvement to fraud resistance resulting from the replacement of a numeric code with a biometrics. Further, the system remains cumbersome and inconvenient to use because it too requires the presentation of a personalized memory token in order to initiate an access request.
Almost uniformly, prior art disclosing biometrics are token-based systems which teach away from biometrics recognition without dependence on personalized memory tokens. Reasons cited for such teachings range from storage requirements for biometrics recognition systems to significant time lapses in identification of a large number of individuals, even for the most powerful computers.
In view of the foregoing, there has long been a need for an electronic scrip transaction system that is completely tokenless, ensuring Scrip Supporter convenience by providing authorization without requiring the Scrip Supporter to possess, carry, and present one or more proprietary tokens containing stored data customized for the Scrip Supporter, such as man-made portable memory devices, in order to accumulate the scrip, expend scrip units, or make scrip donations to their desired Scrip Beneficiary. Anyone who has lost a card, left it at home, had a card stolen knows well the keenly and immediately-felt inconvenience caused by such problems. Therefore, there is a need for an electronic biometric scrip transaction system that is entirely tokenless.
There is a further need for a computerized electronic scrip transaction system that uses a strong, secure, non-transferable link to the person being identified, as opposed to merely verifying a Scrip Supporter's possession of any physical objects that can be freely transferred. Therefore, there is a need for an electronic scrip transaction system that relies on Scrip Supporter biometrics, such as finger images, facial scans, voice prints, iris or retinal scans, and the like. Such a biometric is any distinct human characteristic which can uniquely identify an individual.
There is another need in the industry for a scrip system that is sufficiently versatile to accommodate both Scrip Supporters who desire to use personal identification numbers (PINs) for added security and also Scrip Supporters who prefer not to use them.
Lastly, such a system must be affordable and flexible enough to be operatively compatible with existing networks having a variety of electronic transaction devices and scrip system configurations.
As such, it is an objective of the invention to provide an electronic scrip system and method that is completely tokenless and eliminates the need for a Scrip Supporter to directly possess any personalized, portable man-made token which is encoded or programmed with data personal to or customized for a single authorized Scrip Supporter, such as a smart card, magnetic swipe card or a personal computer with resident Scrip Supporter-specific data.
It is another object of the invention to provide a computer system that is capable of verifying a Scrip Supporter's identity from convenient, secure and non-transferable data, as opposed to merely verifying his possession of propriety objects and information. Therefore it is an objective of this invention that the system use a biometric sample with unique physical characteristics and which is obtained directly from the person of the Scrip Supporter. One such biometric sample is registered with the computer system and another is provided when the Scrip Supporter conducts a scrip transaction. These two biometric samples are compared by an electronic identicator, which is a computer that uses this comparison to validate or deny the identity of the Scrip Supporter.
Yet another object of the invention is to provide a computer system wherein access is secure, yet designed to be convenient and easy for a Scrip Supporter to use.
Yet another object of the invention is to enable a Scrip Supporter to donate scrip which are either immediately provided to a pre-designated Scrip Beneficiary or are stored for later access by the Scrip Beneficiary.
Another objective of this invention is that it function at both with merchants at the retail point of sale and with merchants over the internet.
Another objective of the invention is that the scrip participating entity, whether a Scrip Merchant or a Scrip Beneficiary, be identified by an electronic identicator, wherein the Scrip Merchant's identification is verified. Therefore, the Scrip Merchant would register with the electronic identicator some identification data, which may consist of any of the following data: a hardware ID code, a phone number, an email address, a street address, a digital certificate, an account number, a biometric, or a biometric and PIN combination.
Another objective of the invention is to be added in a simple and cost-effective manner to existing terminals currently installed at points of sale and used over the internet.
Yet another objective of the invention is to be efficiently and effectively operative with existing financial transactions systems and protocols, specifically as these systems and protocols linked to the processing of electronic scrip programs.